#Or google the difference between “animal rights” and “animal welfare” | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aloeverawrites · 1 year ago

Text

Part two

The real world

(tw, animal abuse, illness, covid-19,

So you've said that it's okay to kill animals if they've had a good life and the death is painless.

The reason eating animals, or buying animal products is wrong is partly because those aren't the conditions that farm animals live under. I mean personally, I wouldn't like kill like a happy dog for no reason it's kind of cruel to take someone away from a life they actually life.

But the conditions you've put in order to making buying animal products okay, are unfortunately not being met.

We all agree that factory farms are not humane. 99% of animals in farms live on factory farms in the US and globally 90% do. You can google factory farms if you want to but I'm not posting any pictures or going into detail because it's traumatising. Let's just say that every kind of animal abuse is probably routine and legal because farm animals are not protected under animal cruelty laws. (tw these links describe animal abuse.)

These forms of abuse are not things that these animals would encounter in nature at least not on this scale. The predators that kill them wouldn't be able to hurt them like this, only humans can and they do. We're the worse choice.

I won't go into detail about how we kill them but that last link mentions some of it. The stunning methods we use are pretty bad and cause pain, and the animal can still be conscious for the actual slaughter so they're often ineffective. It is not painless. There's a reason pet parents go to the vet and not a slaughterhouse when they want to painlessly put down an animal.

And finally, these animals are not protected from starvation or illness under our current system. In fact we increase their chances of encountering these cruel things in some ways. (Tw mentions of illness and void.) "Researchers have linked concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) with increased viral and bacterial transmissions. Environmental stressors on CAFOs—such as animal overcrowding, enclosed facilities, illness-inducing grain feed, and unsanitary conditions—facilitate the spread of disease. These conditions also take a substantial toll on farm animals�� bodies and their ability to fight off infections." https://www.theregreview.org/2022/10/12/khodor-how-factory-farming-could-cause-the-next-covid-19/

So basically, the reason I'm vegan and I fight for animal rights and not just welfare, is because of this. At least 90% of the system is outright abuse and 100% of these animal's lives end badly. Even if we could stop the animal abuse by improving welfare, I still don't think it's okay to kill someone who's sentient and doesn't want to be killed. There isn't a significant difference between myself and an animal that means my right to life should be respected but there's shouldn't. So I'm choosing to respect their right.

And I don't think we can reform a system that's built on ignoring the basic right of these animals. Animal welfare often reduces abuse, by moving chickens out of cages and into crowded warehouses and maybe adding a small yard to make it free-range. It's still important but I think that animal rights are important too.

Animal agriculture can't operate on the scale it does while treating animals the way it does, we would have to cut back significantly on animal products in order to maintain animal welfare. Veganism just reflects that reality. I don't want to give my money to a system that we know abuses animals. We don't know any farms that don't abuse their animals, there aren't any non-cruel companies to support. So I go for the option that's always safe..er, plant based companies. They probably still cause harm, but not as directly and you can find more ethical brand from there.

So yeah, basically this was to say that there aren't companies that meet the conditions that you believe makes it okay to buy meat, and therefore it's not okay to buy meat. Or any other animal products really.

(There are some vegans who due to personal reasons are forced to buy from companies they're morally opposed to, but they still boycott in other ways and are still vegan. We don't control what's in our meds.)

Thanks for the ask! I like to censor people's usernames so no one harasses them because the internet is a bad place lol. So if you'd like to add onto the post just be respectful please the og asker might see it.

So I'm answering this in two parts

Addressing this in a hypothetical world

Addressing this in the real world

The situations are very different so the answers for both will we as well.

But let's just address the term cruelty which is "behaviour which causes physical or mental harm to another". Killing someone and the methods we use to kill them causes physical harm, enough that it ends their lives. So the act of killing and eating an animal is often animal cruelty itself. After all animals only evolved pain receptors to avoid physical harm and death.

But moving on,

The hypothetical

These animals might end up being killed by other animals. But before that, they'll have free lives in their natural environments with their families. They'll be able to engage in their natural behaviours. Freedom is an important thing to have. These animals might be killed by others, probably will, and some of them by illness or injury. But some might be lucky enough to live to old age. And in every scenario they would end up as food for scavengers or like worm food.

But so do humans.

In our prehistoric days humans had to deal with being hunted and eaten too. And illness, and disease and starvation. And when they died they became food for scavenging animals too. We were part of the food chain. And our lives weren't worth less back then. It still wouldn't be okay to hurt us.

This assumption that it's okay to kill or hurt someone if they're going to be hurt by someone or something else, is flawed.

Like imagine if you knew someone's house was going to be robbed so your decided to rob them first. It's not okay to hurt someone just because someone else might do it.

We have to hold ourselves to our morals even if other people don't. We usually don't base our morals off of someone's else actions or future actions.

And humans are held to a higher standard then animals. For example, let's say this cat is always biting this other cat. Well it wouldn't be okay for a human to then also bite the cat, and the reasoning "they were going to be bitten anyway" doesn't really hold up.

It doesn't matter what the other cat is doing, an adult human should know better.

Now let's look at the phrase "in any other possible situation, they'll still end up as food." It's probably meant to mean "In any other possible situation, they'll still be killed."

And that's not true.

Let's go back to the house break-in scenario. You have a lot of options in that scearnio.

Break into the person's house first.

Don't stop the break in and don't stage one of your own.

Stop the break in and help the home owner.

To take it into your hypothetical, human domesticated dogs, not as food but as companions. Instead of killing them or letting them be killed by other animals, we protected them. Tried to help them live to old age instead of letting them be hurt.

That's what vegans do to farmed animals. There are sanctuaries for cows like this one. :)

youtube

So when it comes to farm animals, we have a few options.

Kill them first.

Don't kill them and don't stop other animals from killing them. Or leave them in nature. (Which isn't really an option anymore. These aren't natural animals. The real neutral option is not breeding and creating these animals in the first place and letting farmland become nature again. Then letting animals hunt each other in their natural habitats and balance the ecosystem, and fix climate change-)

Keep them in sanctuaries and take care of them. (Like we do with other animals that are friends and not food.)

And in some ways you're right, the animal wouldn't care if the animal hurting them was a human or a different animal. But the animal would care that they're being hurt instead of being left to grow old.

When we choose between eating meat and not eating meat, we're not choosing between a human killing a cow or a lion killing them. We're choosing between a human killing a cow and a cow dying of old age. And the cow would much rather we pick old age.

We have the choice between killing someone or being kind to them.

#vegan for the animals #animal rights

1 note · View note

finsterhund · 5 years ago

Text

Service dogs “are not here to serve us” rebuttal

Hardcore vegans are known for hypocritical stances such as forcing domesticated obligate carnivores to eat vegan food, thinking sheep don’t need to be sheared, and turning a blind eye to the fact that many animal-free products from developing countries only come over to North America because of unfair treatment of workers. Recently the spying algorithm of my google phone sent an article my way that highlighted some animal rights organization’s preposterous instagram post against service dogs.

The post reads as follows:

The default position of veganism is to reject the use of non-human animals. This includes ALL uses, including service animals.

The key word here is “use.” They are not, and never were, here for us to use. Non-human animals owe us absolutely nothing.

Yet some believe humans do have the right to have certain animals and individuals serve us; therefore, they domesticate them for this purpose. But domestication does not involve consent by all those involved, and there is unequal power in the relationship. Just because individuals CAN be trained to serve us does not mean that they SHOULD.

When we adopt non-humans as our companions, we can save them from further exploitation. To continue to use them as tools for human purposes after adoption goes wholly against vegan principles. Therefore, we remain opposed to the use of animals (such as dogs) for human service, even if the animals were NOT bought from a breeder.

Service dogs and the like are still a WANT and not a need. And regardless of treatment, the use of any animal for service promotes the idea that animals are here to work for humans rather than to exist in their own right as individuals.

If we haven’t already made the point clear, under no circumstances should ANY non-human be used at the hands of humans.

Let it be known. I used to be a hardcore ARA back in the day, and I still have strong opinions for animal welfare. I am notably however, not inherently opposed to humans consuming meat, as we are opportunist omnivores so while we should be working towards humane and sustainable food sources, I think we should still be allowed to evolve out of eating meat at our own pace as a species if we are going to abandon it altogether. Forcing an animal to conform to a dietary restriction they don’t in nature is inhumane, and humans are animals. I also do not believe in full on animal rights. The difference “rights” have as oppose to “welfare” are basically concerning things like body rights, personhood, etc. I do believe in implementing animal rights under certain situations and contexts however, and this does involve dogs. I might touch up on this at a later date.

The relationship the human species has with the domestic dog is unheard of on the same level in any other lifeform on Earth. Tarantulas are known to keep tiny frogs as pets, and we have certainly domesticated many other animals, but a symbiotic relationship as in-tune as humans have with dogs is currently unparalleled. There are many factors that go into this. I for one think that cats are fully capable of developing similar bonds if we didn't normalize letting them run outside unsupervised for days at a time and intermingle with feral colonies, but that’s neither here nor there. Dogs had a head start, and a key factor was that unlike cats, their ancestors shared a similar ecological niche to humans, had nearly identical social structures, and lived in extremely tight-knit familial groups like we did. These similarities would put the perfect ground work in place. There are fossil records that indicated that early man cared a lot for their sick or injured family members, with individuals who wouldn't have been able to have offered anything of working value to their family for the entirety of their lives, based on the state of their injuries were cared for far past when they would have otherwise survived if left to struggle. This behavior is also seen in domestic dogs and their wild relatives. Note: the whole “alpha male” thing were unfounded studies that turns out were done on extremely stressed individuals forced to cohabitate with strangers in captivity and aren't valid.

Dogs have evolved to eat the same food that we do, we significantly changed and altered their physical bodies so they’d be suited to a whole variety of different roles in our society, dogs have evolved to have more specialized eyebrows so that they can better physically communicate with us, and some new studies in their early stages even suggest that we may even have some sort of a proto-psychic bond with dogs. Or in the very least they have evolved to be extremely aware of our feelings based on tiny facial expressions or specific scents. Still no small feat. Particularly sharp breeds mimic human speech based on vocalizations they associate with excitement or praise. Dogs can understand specific words and tones of voice in our language, follow our line of gaze and direction indicated by hand gesture, and generally have cognitive abilities akin to a five-year-old. Dogs are known to empathize with us when we express negative emotions and are well documented for pining for deceased human family members and waiting for them for the remainder of their own lives. Dogs do not understand the concept of death, but they understand the concept of losing us. While there are many animals conventionally smarter than dogs, this bond cannot be replicated to the same extent with them. To a dog, their human is family. To be protected at all cost. Dogs LOVE us. And it’s a pure unconditional love. Flawed only in how innocent a dog is. Unable to understand concepts like good and evil. This is extremely serious. I cannot stress how one-in-a-million, incredible, sacred, and rare what happened between us and dogs is. It’s the most beautiful thing to me that exists on planet Earth. It’s one of the only things that makes me think the universe is more than just cold and unfeeling. If there is anything that could be possibly used as proof of a higher power in this universe it’d be this. Of all the things left up to chance in this universe, humans and dogs found each other. Anyways, sorry to go off. It’s just something I’m extremely passionate about.

The point I’m making of course, is that dogs are just short of actually being members of our own species, and having a service dog is basically the same thing as asking your kindergartner to get the newspaper or pick up the TV remote you accidentally dropped.

In fact, for many service dogs the tasks they’re trained to perform aren't just basically things like those examples, they’re literally things like those examples.

So lets get some misconceptions out of the way:

“Dogs don’t like working”

Dogs love making us happy. They love helping us. They feel accomplished when they have a participating role in our lives. Especially true for working breeds, it’s actually recommended that dogs get some form of training or work exercise as part of a daily or weekly routine for their own mental enrichment. As well as exercise. All breeds generally associated with service dog and guide dog work have extensive histories of performing tasks for humans. And they love doing it! Retriever breeds are literally named after the fact that they came along to retrieve downed prey animals for their humans. This is basically “fetch” with a purpose. And fetch is the most well-known way we play with our dogs in existence. Retrievers are a popular choice for service dogs because their selectively bred “gentle mouth” and retrieving instincts make them the perfect candidate for a pupper who picks up things you dropped, and can bring you a pill bottle, phone, or emergency pager in a pinch. Dogs who also have the body strength for it get exercise and mental enrichment from performing tasks like balance assist. Just like how sled dogs LOVE sledding. Once again, you've likely heard cases of maltreated sled dogs, but the possibility for being exploited doesn't change the fact that if it’s responsibly managed, these dogs enjoy this line of work. In fact, if you have a sled dog and they don’t get to exert themselves physically, often times by needing far more walks and play, they’re going to be bored and miserable. The dog likes and wants to do these things for us. We just have a responsibility to make sure it’s not hurting them. A person can enjoy their job, and it’s only if something happens like they’re not making a living wage that it becomes exploitative. Dogs are the same. So long as they enjoy what they’re doing and it’s not causing them any issues, they’re probably going to have even more enriched lives for doing it!

“Training is abusive”

Proper training is positive reinforcement. There’s some idiots who think that physically punishing a dog is a good form of training, and I’d like to recommend them this to read. Service tasks pretty much MUST be trained with positive reinforcement. In order to encourage them to perform these tasks. Not only that, but training is a form of mental enrichment. Every dog, regardless of whether they’re a family pet or a working animal should have some form of obedience training. It’s good for them! They feel accomplished. It’s a fun bonding activity to do for a few minutes a day. It is possible for a dog to “burn out” (trained too hard too fast resulting in frustration and giving up) or “wash out” (when interactions are inconsistent, leading the dog to be confused and not behave as indicated) so there are incentives in place to ensure that training is well-paced, moderate, and isn't frustrating to the dog. Proper, positive, and well-paced training is a perfect way to add a healthy routine to a dog’s life and strengthen their bond with you. It’s enriching. In the same way that a crossword puzzle on your commute to work is to you. Dogs like making us happy, they like challenge, and they like accomplishments.

“Dogs aren't consenting to the tasks they are performing”

Remember when I said how routine and doing things to make us happy strengthen our dog’s bond and enrich their lives? Remember how I said that many tasks dogs are trained to do are basically playing but with a purpose? Remember how I said that training for service work is entirely positive reinforcement and dogs are incentively encouraged to do their tasks? This is where animal rights vs animal welfare comes in. The notion that animals should have the exact same rights of personhood that humans have is what the angle these people are going with is reflecting. They see dogs being “tricked” to do things. As them being exploited. Even though these things are fun and enriching for dogs. If a task is something the dog can naturally do, and willingly wants to do, or wants to do to show us they care, they are consenting to it. If I really like my friend’s character so I draw them gift art am I being exploited because they’re getting free art? No.

“Service work is harming the dog”

There are situations where a task could be unfit for a particular breed: ie a lean, thin dog who isn't equipped for pulling being made to do a related task, but this is a problem in an individual situation, one that trainers would look into extensively. A happy and healthy service dog is a service dog who is also ensuring their handler is happy and healthy. There’s no reason that somebody would force a dog to perform a task they physically can’t do, because that would just make life hard on both dog and handler. Professional trainers and laws being put in place are also strongly against this sort of thing. We have publicly available guides all over the place to explain which dogs may not be suited for service work based on temperament or size. It ultimately comes down to the individual, like every situation involving neglect or cruelty. Other issues such as not having your dog wear shoes when they spend a lot of time walking on hot pavement, not ensuring your dog has access to cleanliness, food, and medicine, etc. are not issues exclusive to service dogs. They’re issues for dog husbandry in general. Training organizations and certain parts of the world (Like BC!) will pretty much ensure that the dog is at peak health, or they’re taken back. In BC service dogs must look healthy and clean, pass health examinations from a vet, be up to date with shots, and be sterilized. Otherwise they can’t be a service dog. That’s stricter laws than the ones in place for pet dogs. In this situation a service dog has more protections towards their quality of life than a pet dog does.

Now lets dissect the instagram post point by point:

The default position of veganism is to reject the use of non-human animals. This includes ALL uses, including service animals.

1. note how they say “non-human animals” because veganism loves to kick issues with farmers in developing countries under the rug as I previously explained. 2. INTERSECTIONALITY! Humans ARE animals. You should care about the wellbeing of all animals and nature. This includes humans, especially humans being exploited to provide food. 3. I’m also disgusted by their (repeated) claim that service animals are “used.” As if my massive explanation that dogs do this because they love us isn't pretty obvious if you've spent any portion of your life with a dog.

The key word here is “use.” They are not, and never were, here for us to use. Non-human animals owe us absolutely nothing.

AGAIN WITH THE “USE” I’m about to bite you. I suppose if a child wants their parent to read to them or hug them the parent is also being USED? Dogs don’t owe us anything. Yes. 100% agree. They aren't being forced to do these things because we feel they owe us. They WANT to do things for us. Out of the goodness of their hearts. Because they feel accomplished. Because it enriches their lives. Because they LOVE us. Damn it.

Yes, it is pretty unfair that many animals were domesticated for our use. But I’m gonna explain it as gently as I can; dogs and humans have a symbiotic relationship. Domestication, like with cats, started out as an accident. Then we started providing for each other. Here we see the consent thing. (refer to my “dogs don’t consent to service tasks” rebuttal. The term “service” IMO is outdated. They’re not serving us like slaves, they’re aiding us like you’d help a loved one who needs your help. And again, training is ENRICHING for dogs. It’s fun. it helps them feel accomplished. It stops them from being bored. If a dog wasn't consenting to being trained they would burn out.

For someone keen on arguing for the rights of dogs you really are just going to refer to their role in our lives as “tools” huh? A symbiotic relationship where a dog does nice things because we let them know that we’d want them to isn't them being a tool. It’s them showing us compassion and caring for their family. Also LMAO at the breeder part. Comes out of left field.

“A WANT and not a need” oh my god. Fuck you. Living with a dog should be a human right, and living with a human should be a dog right. We exist because of each other, we are made for each other. Our evolution was influenced by each other. There are people who’s lives are made infinitely more livable because of the compassion and care their dog gives them, even if they’re not doing tasks. Dogs pretty much need humans in their lives to have quality of life. I’ll give you a hint. Dogs do exist in their own right as individuals. Individuals who bond with and show their love for their families by doing nice things for them. Why the hell is this so hard for you to understand? Dogs derive enjoyment and accomplishment from the symbiotic relationships we share. Not only that, but based on this instagram post I’d say dogs also have significantly more empathy for others than you do (to be honest I think that’s the case 90% of the time when it comes to humans), because they can understand helping someone out of the goodness of their hearts but you don’t.

If we haven’t already made the point clear, under no circumstances should ANY non-human be used at the hands of humans.

USED USED USED. If you’re so bent out of shape about this why don’t you just rally against keeping dogs as pets in the first place? (some of these people are. I've seen it) I mean, a symbiotic relationship with any sort of power imbalance is in and of itself “use” by your definition.

Reading this instagram post I’m genuinely concerned if this person has ever been in the same room as a dog before. It’s just really insulting.

Growing up as an abuse survivor, all the dogs I lived with were so empathetic. They knew I needed someone to comfort me, to keep me safe, to let me know everything was going to be okay. They knew. The amount of information that could be transfered between our gazes was astronomical. A dog wouldn't come to you in your darkest hour, when you've beginning to lose your voice from how hard you've been crying, and stay with you for hours on end if they didn't love you. Love is about doing things for each other. Willing sacrifice. Empathy and compassion. If you teach a dog ways that they can help you even further, of course they’re going to want to do that. No matter how messed up and grim our society becomes we’ll always be there for each other. It’s the only constant we know. Humans have an obligation to protect this sacred bond but the fact that some people are so convinced of shit like this is just heartrending. Dogs want to do things for us just as much as we should want to do things for them. And when many of these things bring enrichment to their lives, there really isn't a reason not to let them and help them understand a little better.

In conclusion:

#text post #long post #negative #rant #I'm legitimately gutted that these people exist #service dogs

4 notes · View notes

drummcarpentry · 4 years ago

Text

Supporting Small Business Saturday with 2020-Conscious Marketing

Posted by MiriamEllis

Image credit: Elvert Barnes

“Conscious spending with the community can contribute to neighborhood sustainability.” — Christine Araquel, The Park’s Finest

I encountered this quote from a restauranteur on the American Express Small Business Saturday website, and just these few words called a vivid image to my mind: local business owners and customers gazing together toward the horizon, hoping to pierce the clouds of COVID-19 and see them clearing away, revealing communities that are still standing, and still capable of sustaining our hometowns, our cities, and our dreams.

72% of consumers believe they will frequent neighboring businesses more after the crisis is over, but that will take all of us doing our part now to ensure as many SMBs are still there to greet us when better days return.

In Q4 of 2019, I used my column to encourage local business owners to start having meaningful conversations with customers about how “conscious spending” at independently-owned enterprises impacts local quality of life. Buying local affects everything from mental and physical health, to emergency services access, diversity, democracy, and climate change.

In 2020, it’s time to turn up the local SEO industry’s dial on conscious spending. Today, I’m urging every business owner and marketer to consider dedicating space to a concerted educational campaign on the topic on their websites, social profiles, local business listings, reviews, and real-world interfaces. Your work, and mine, depends on sustaining independently-owned local businesses through and far beyond Small Business Saturday. With the right strategy, we can make an impactful effort together.

What is Small Business Saturday?

American Express created Small Business Saturday in 2010 in response to the Great Recession. This annual event invites communities to shop at small, local businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Small Business Saturday’s date this year is November 28th.

Americans spent $19.6 billion at independent businesses on Small Business Saturday in 2019. In 2020, AmEx is placing special emphasis on shopping locally to help SMBs remain viable amid the challenges of the public health emergency. AmEx is also strongly encouraging shoppers to support Black-owned independent businesses this year.

Practical tactics for Small Business Saturday preparation

To ensure your local business is ready to welcome the maximum number of shoppers on the big day, check these off your list:

Do a quick audit of your website to be sure all contact information and hours of operation are current and accurate for each location of your business.

Do the same for your local business listings on the major location data platforms.

Write at least one Small Business Saturday Google Post to explain your special offers for the day.

Post a Google Q&A about your participation in Small Business Saturday.

Publicize your Small Business Saturday offers on your social channels.

Respond to any recent reviews that mention Small Business Saturday.

Make use of any appealing partnership deals you qualify for by participating in AmEx’s official Small Business Saturday program.

Make use of AmEx’s tutorials on topics like contactless payments, answering COVID FAQs, and implementing digital shopping.

These are all standard good practices to ready your company for this major shopping day, but amid the severe challenges of 2020, it’s time to go beyond common techniques.

Share-worthy Buy Local statistics

If conscious local shopping is the goal, education is the key to helping customers make informed choices.

There’s never been a better year for local vendors to re-envision themselves as heroic community educators. Beyond the typical preparations you make to get ready for Small Business Saturday, now is the time to start sharing with customers why conscious shopping with you matters. Consider:

In 2012, small businesses made up 99.7% of US employer firms. SMBs with 500 or fewer employees are the backbone of the US economy.

As of August 2020, 163,735 total U.S. businesses on Yelp were reported as closed, with 97,966 reported as permanently closed due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the last Civic Economics Prime Numbers report found that Amazon had displaced 62,000 shops and 900,000 retail jobs in just one year. Small businesses are struggling to survive the tandem challenges of COVID and monopoly.

As much as $7 billion in uncollected state and local taxes were lost in one year by local communities due to Amazon, depleting resources needed to cope with emergency and ongoing needs. Meanwhile, if every US family spent just $10 extra locally each month instead of at a big box or national chain, over $9.3 billion would be directly returned to local economies. Our hospitals, fire departments, schools, and other essentials of community life depend on having a strong tax base.

Small businesses not only create the local and state tax base essential to civic life, they also contribute 250% more than big brands to community causes. Shopping locally directly impacts services and programs you care about like first responders, food and housing security, children’s resources, and animal welfare.

Make a copy of Moz’s free Why Buy Local stats sheet to help you tell a compelling small business story to the communities in which you serve and market.

For local business owners: Where to educate in the run-up to Small Business Saturday 2020

Share the stories (with supporting statistics) of your choice to boost awareness of the benefits of shopping at independently-owned, local businesses in the following places:

Websites

Determine which resources matter most to the communities you serve, and explain how shopping local funds those essentials. Create a section on the homepage of your website summarizing these benefits, and link it to a landing page that expands on how conscious local shopping is sustaining the community.

For example, in my community, taxes are absolutely critical to keeping official fire departments operational, and volunteer fire departments depend on local giving. In the American West, where we’ve been in a constant state of disaster due to fire for months, SMBs can use their websites to draw the throughline between shopping local and funding essential emergency services. In other parts of the country, it could be flood relief, or food banks, or the survival of local newspapers.

Build a strong internal link structure pointing to your shop local landing page, and sprinkle your product and service pages with stats proving the point that choosing your business instead of a big box or online monopoly makes life better where shoppers live.

Social profiles

Bring creativity to bear in publicizing your most compelling reasons to shop local on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms. You don’t have to guilt-trip customers into spending at independents, but you can engage them with statistics that show how shopping with you benefits the community, as well as inviting customers to tell their own stories.

Use social media to ask which services, resources, places, and causes matter most to your customers, and help locals connect the dots between where they spend and how their purchases fund whatever is valued most at a local level.

Local business listings

Concise statistics can be incorporated into the description fields of your local business listings, Google Posts, videos, photos, GMB messaging, and Google Q&A. Use these spaces to give local shoppers extra reasons to do business with you.

And, of course, be sure the basic contact information and hours of operation on your major local business listings are up-to-date before Small Business Saturday, so that first-time shoppers who like your messaging can find you without any misdirection or disappointment.

Reviews

Incorporate brief statistics into review request campaigns, encouraging respondents to voice their educated opinions on why they choose to shop locally with you.

For example, a review request might state that sales at your business contribute X amount of funding to first responders, and that you’d appreciate the reviewer writing about how supporting these services matters to them and to the community. A review corpus spangled with persuasive statements from fully-aware customers can help other shoppers choose you over corporate competitors.

Additionally, local business owners are sometimes at a loss for how to vary their “thank you” owner responses to positive reviews. Diminish repetition by including data in your replies. For example, a hypothetical owner response could read:

“So glad you enjoyed your soft tacos, Mary! Your great review is extra appreciated right now, as dining with us is also ensuring a 3% donation to our local food bank from every order. You’re making a difference by helping us make sure everyone in the community has food on the table this winter. Thank you so much for caring about our town. We hope to see you again soon!”

The new Moz Local plans will alert you to every new review that comes in on our partner networks. Use these alerts to craft timely, informative thank-you notes in your owner responses.

Real-world interfaces

Storefronts, window displays, in-store signage, menus, brochures, mailers, packaging, receipts, business cards, and many other real-world assets can convey educational statistics that will help locals choose you to support the local economy.

Google has interesting theories about the messy middle of the customer’s journey during COVID-19. Your online assets may be of most influence during the evaluation and exploration phases of the buyer’s path, but don’t overlook the messages you’re sending to customers whose attention you’ve already captured. Using tangible assets — like window displays seen by passersby — to showcase how local patronage directly sustains the community could bring you repeat business from convinced customers.

For agencies: Be more than a local SEO — be a local business advocate

Image credit Indie Bound/Raven Bookstore

Local SEO agencies know, first-hand, the difficulties they and their clients have been through in 2020. Consider Danny Caine: teacher, poet, author, and owner of The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas. Like so many independent business owners, he gives back to his community. Whether he’s serving locally-famous pie to visiting authors, or donating to restore the neighborhood church where Langston Hughes worshipped, Mr. Caine walks the hometown walk with a good heart. He’s like so many of our SMB clients.

But Danny Caine has taken community advocacy one step further than most local business owners. His letter to Jeff Bezos on the distinction between healthy competition and harmful disruption made some news. His self-published zine, How to Resist Amazon and Why, sold 10,000 copies and is now headed for formal publication as a full-length book.

While so many local search marketing agencies have been offering discounts to clients to keep them going during the pandemic, or simply seeing their SMB contracts disappear, Mr. Caine is proactively offering education to inspire conscious local shopping.

If a busy independent bookseller like Danny Caine can make the time to utilize local, social, and print media as advocacy channels, how much could skilled marketers at good agencies do to boost messaging in support of their SMB clients? Is there anything standing in our way?

Just do it

Multiple inspiring speakers at MozCon 2020 advised brands to have strong opinions and take public stands on important issues, building affinity with customers based on shared values. Mention was made of the famous Nike ad featuring abolitionist, Colin Kaepernick. In dollars and cents, the year following Nike’s commercial brought them $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, a 31% increase in sales,

and all-time-high stock values. But it brought the country so much more than this — it role-modeled courageously doing the right thing in the face of adversity.

The local SEO industry doesn’t have the same visibility as a footwear giant or a beloved superbowl quarterback. Collectively, ten of my favorite local SEOs have about 130,000

Twitter followers. What can we do, with only this much reach, to support local business owners like Danny Caine in what has become a critical, nationwide struggle of independents vs. monopoly?

Marketers: you’ve spent your careers developing incredible publicity skills! I want to know what your best ideas are, and I have three suggestions of my own to share to get the conversation started:

Idea 1: Take a stand on education

Because local SEOs work in tech, we find ourselves in a work environment that sometimes reveres market disruption just for the sake of the “wow” factor. We look at our social media feeds and see our peers cheering for Amazon Prime Day because it’s cool, for every Google AI development because it’s cool, for big box brands because they’re cool.

But for our own client base and our own communities, we know in our bones that it’s the opposite of cool to see local businesses closing down and workers displaced, or to see independent business owners struggling to scrape together the budget for a competitive local search marketing campaign.

There are hundreds of good reasons not to cheerlead for the biggest competitors of independent businesses, but for local SEOs, we don’t have to look further than our client rosters to choose which side to champion. Unless you’re holding out in the hopes of a Fortune 500 company becoming your star client, you’re already working with one or two feet in the SMB camp. So why not speak up about it?

That audience of 130,000 Twitter followers would quickly get used to seeing local SEO agencies taking bold, principled stands on the basis of ethics, civics, and local economics. What you say could begin influencing the larger worlds of SEO and digital marketing, so that the norm becomes covering market disruption with greater thoughtfulness about its impacts on local community life.

In the run-up to Small Business Saturday, why not start by sharing some Buy Local stats on your social feeds? Then, looking ahead to 2021, see how far you can take your agency in the direction of client support. I’ll follow any marketer who takes the leap from local SEO to local business advocate.

Idea 2: Make your agency website a source of educational citations

Most digital marketing agencies already have some sort of portfolio, and they’re often one of the most underutilized areas of the company website. Reimagined, portfolios are only a couple of steps away from becoming useful directories of structured citations for clients that could help boost their organic visibility and associated local pack rankings.

Putting the power of your agency’s own PA/DA behind the local brands you want to see beating out spam and corporate competitors is a great act of SMB allyship. Your agency could:

Create an in-depth page for each client containing structured NAP, a link, and the best data you can amass about how choosing this SMB benefits its city of location vs. shopping with big boxes of online giants.

Build good internal links to these pages.

Seek out a few good inbound links to these pages

Promote these pages on your social feeds

Use these pages as your examples at conferences, on webinars, and podcasts in 2021

Try to build at least one of these citation pages for a favorite SMB client before Small Business Saturday so that you’re templating the process. Create more in the new year and track how they’re ranking in the overall scheme of your clients’ unstructured citation/reputation assets.

Idea 3: Educate pro bono and educate for a fee

“I felt like I had to do more,” says Local SEO Search founder, John Vuong, and I hope you will take two minutes to watch his highly motivational video:

Many local SEOs are giving knowledge and help away right now out of an honorable desire to help SMBs get through tough times. Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling recently discussed this on a LocalU Last Week in Local podcast:

Mary: One of the tactics that’s been used here in our little valley is having free “get your business online” things where an agency will go in and help small businesses in their area actually get online and get verified and start harvesting some of the rewards of having Google My Business set up properly. It’s a really worthwhile thing to do.

Mike: I think with just an hour a month, an agency can then both build out the listing and provide additional services including metrics that demonstrate significant key performance indicators as they build this business toward a full digital relationship.

I recommend listening to the full conversation starting at about 10:10 in the video, and to the interview by Garrett Sussman that sparked it. In completely practical terms, our industry knows that a thriving local business scene means more clients with better funding for really good marketing.

I’d suggest adding one extra ingredient into any pro bono or discounted work you’re doing for local businesses: freely share my stats sheet with independent business owners to help them better tell their own story of how shopping with them sustains community life.

Meanwhile, if you’re a local SEO who has earned enough of a reputation to be a guest on podcasts, a speaker at webinars, or a paid presenter at conferences, build education about the vital role of independent businesses into your pitches. The more the digital marketing industry hears from us, and the more awareness we raise about the importance of conscious shopping, the better position we are putting our clients in to win.

Simmering success this year for a better Small Business Saturday in 2021

Image credit: Mark

If 2020 got in the way of you doing everything you wanted to do leading up to Small Business Saturday, consider that we’ve all got 12 months ahead of us before next year’s event. That’s 12 months to double down on educational messaging to support year-round, conscious, local shopping.

I don’t want to say it will be easy — there will definitely be hurdles.

In particular, marketing on the promise of dubious convenience is as old as commerce. I’ve laughed at canned soup ad copy telling consumers to buy their product to avoid standing over a hot stove for hours. Education is what makes us able to spot the fiction here: when you make soup from scratch, you turn on the burner and then go about the rest of your day until it’s ready to eat. Nobody, not even Jacques Pépin, actually stands glued to the stove while homemade soup simmers.

The Amazons, the big boxes, the monopolies and near-monopolies, are counting on the public going along with the fiction of convenience indefinitely and never stopping to count the cost to our communities.

Actively point out to your customer base that it’s not actually more convenient to shop giant “everything stores” anymore (if it ever was?), because with the curbside pickup and home delivery revolution 2020 brought small businesses, “near me” shopping has never been easier. Highlight that we can all take a 10-minute drive to pick up an item and get ourselves out of the house, or place a quick order via the web from a local purveyor and go about the rest of our day.

At least, we can do this so long as we still have local independents to buy from, to support with our dollars, and with our serious marketing skills. The choice is ours, and the real convenience will be on the side of the people if we choose to build thriving tax bases, community health and safety, human well-being, and local character via locally-supported commerce.

With 12 months between Small Business Saturday 2020 and 2021, you have the time and talents to contribute to positive social change. What are your best ideas? Please share in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

0 notes

lakelandseo · 4 years ago